The use of honeycomb panels as a structural material offers several advantages including relatively low specific weight, relatively high out-of-plane stiffness, and relatively low material cost. Honeycomb panels are made up of a pair of relatively thin face sheets interconnected by a core. The core is formed of lightweight material configured as an array of interconnected cells each having a hexagonal cross-sectional shape. The face sheets may be formed of metallic material or composite material such as one or more plies of fiber-reinforced fiber matrix material.
The use of honeycomb panels in structural assembles may require the installation of potted fasteners such as threaded inserts into the honeycomb panel to allow the use of threaded fasteners such as bolts for coupling a structural member to the honeycomb panel. The installation of a potted insert requires the local removal of a portion of the face sheet and core material of the honeycomb panel, after which a threaded insert is adhesively bonded (e.g., using a potting compound) to the honeycomb that surrounds the removed portion. The process must be repeated at each potential location where a structural member may be attached to the honeycomb panel, resulting in high labor costs. In some examples in which the structural member must be capable of removal and positioning at any one of multiple locations along the honeycomb panel, only a small fraction of the total quantity of potted inserts may be used to attach the structural member to the honeycomb panel. As may be appreciated, the unused potted inserts undesirably add to the overall weight of the honeycomb panel.
For some installations, the structural member being attached to the honeycomb panel may transmit loads to the honeycomb panel that are oriented primarily along a single loading direction. For example, a structural member may transmit primarily in-plane loads to the honeycomb panel, and which may be described as shear loads that are oriented along a direction parallel to the surface of the honeycomb panel. In addition to shear loads, other loads may be transmitted to the honeycomb panel. For example, tension loads may be transmitted along an out-of-plane direction perpendicular to the surface of the honeycomb panel.
As can be seen, there exists a need in the art for a system and method for coupling a structural member to a honeycomb panel or other structure in a manner that reduces the need for installing multiple potted fasteners in the honeycomb panel while allowing flexibility for installing a structural member at any one of a variety of locations along the honeycomb panel, and which is capable of transmitting shear loads with additional capability of transmitting tension loads.